Interstellaaaaaaaaar

[alias_sqbr]

Do you like space? Like, really like space? Do you have a soft spot for theoretical physics taken to imaginative extremes? Can you cope with yet another story about the future and fate of the world which centers entirely around white american dudes (and a light scattering of white american ladies and black american dudes) to the extent that the entire rest of the world might as well not exist? Do you really like space?

Then you might enjoy Interstellar.

I do really like space, as long as it walks that careful line of realistic enough not to make me roll my eyes but over the top scifi-ish enough to be fun (eg more Contact than Gravity) And this movie walks that line pretty well, getting some physics right that NOONE EVER GETS RIGHT but willing to sacrifice accuracy for rule of cool here and there (also The Power of Love. Like Contact with The Power of Faith, except Mathew Maconnahey is older and on the other side of the argument. And the main character :/)

It's like a live action version of the 90s hard sf I devoured enthusiastically all through my late teens, getting through the slightly hackneyed personal relationships and self indulgent dull sections through solid sensawunda. Definitely worth seeing on the big screen, you have a lot of long 2001-esque shots of slowly revolving space stations to sit through.

The world building has some interesting aspects if you don't think too hard, and the plot is ok if ponderous and unsurprising. The female characters aren't quite as useless as the trailer implies, and the black guy gets...some lines...and they're all competent, driven science nerds. But this is very much a Christopher Nolan movie, with all the incoherent morality, skeevy subtext and parochial blather that implies. ALSO NOTE: the start of the film is literally just about farming. For ages.

But, eventually...space!

(Also some background AIs. Predictably, I am both impressed at how well they were made to feel like a natural part of the background worldbuilding without the movie ever losing Space momentum and becoming About AI, and wanting an ENTIRE MOVIE about them. Set in space. Starring all the non white dude science nerds, and space)

Comments

[caramarie]

I have read some very negative reviews and some very positive reviews of Interstellar, but this is definitely the most useful. SPACE!

[alias_sqbr]

Happy to help :)

[owlmoose]

I'm sure I'll watch this eventually, but might not make it to the theater. But I'm not surprised that the physics was better than usual, because Actual Astrophysicist Kip Thorne was a consultant, and (unlike when he was a consultant on Contact) I gather they actually listened to what they said.

Thanks for the rec! :)

[leecetheartist]

This is more or less what I said when I got out of the theatre.

Sort of Contact meets 2001 and none of that in a bad way.

And lots of space and space stations!

[leecetheartist]

Also I was like, dudes, monocultures, really? If one fails plant another monoculture? Did you try a mosaic pattern of buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa, soy, barley, potatoes or something?

Um, going to another planet because all your crops are dying of blight.

Are your crops not going to die if the blight gets to the planet you're going to? You still have to feed the people.

But I really did like the movie.

[alias_sqbr]

Haha yes that was kind of silly. Not sure they had a biology consultant :)

[alias_sqbr]

Sort of Contact meets 2001 and none of that in a bad way.

Yeah!

[alias_sqbr]

gasp

I read "Black Holes and Time Warps" SO MANY TIMES as a teenager. And I was thinking the movie played with some of those ideas pretty well!